Love Grows Everywhere

“Love Grows Everywhere” is a very different kind of picture book. It has two stories running in tandem. Using lyrical, rhyming words, Barry Timms weaves a narrative on how love can be found everywhere, all it needs is our thought and care. Illustrator Tisha Lee through the pictures, tells us a parallel story about a family with green thumb that spreads love by growing plants and selling them.

The most amazing aspect is that the characters in the story – the nature-loving family – is not mentioned at all in words. This style is very similar to Cynthia Rylant’s “Snow”, where a girl and her grandmother are never mentioned in words but appear only in the illustration. Lauren Stringer, the illustrator of “Snow” used these characters to “help carry the story of snow throughout the book”, similar to what Tisha Lee does in “Love Grows Everywhere”.

Katie Wood Ray calls this style, the technique of “crafting a backstory”. Children often notice these parallel stories in the background before adults do. While younger readers can be nudged to notice this technique, older students can try this out in their writing where they use two parallel ideas – one in words and the other in pictures – and the two merge to create a more effective piece.

“Love Grows Everywhere” will be available for sale from 7 December 2021.